Sunday, August 4, 2013

Wearing my baby, swinging my baby, rocking my baby...

There's something so sweet about a sleeping baby.

I love watching Lux sleep-her quiet breathing, her squished cheek, her lips smooshed together, her burrowed eyebrows...however, we don't get to see this all that often.Our lil one is not a great sleeper.Naps are a struggle, and for a teeny person like her, she needs to sleep a majority of day light hours.My little Lux doesn't think so.In fact, I think she's figured out that she might miss out on something if she sleeps.So she just doesn't do it.But not sleeping can make for a very exhausted baby by the end of the day.

For the first couple weeks, she slept fine, because she was held a majority of the day.But after that, any time I placed her down, she was ready to fight it out...and would eventually cry within minutes of being placed down. So, I started experimenting on different things.She would only nap if she was held.So i held her.for TWO or THREE hours each time...and when her waketime is about 45 minutes long before she got tired again, a majority of my day was spent laying with her on my chest. (which honestly was sweet and nice to snuggle...but i couldn't just lay in bed for the next year of her life.

So we tried everything we could think of to help her nap.

We tried a pacifier.

(which at the time worked when first introduced to it...then when I tried it, it didn't work, and then yesterday I found a pacifier that she likes!)

We tried leaving the vacuum on while she was swinging...

this lasted a good thirty minutes.

Then she wouldn't have it anymore.

we tried having alexio sing her to sleep...

oh, wait, no that's not what happened.

I put her down to change her and she promptly fell asleep.

it was really really cute and I hated to change her when she was so sound asleep and looking so cute and cuddly.

then a sweet family gave us this awesome beautiful rocking chair.

and that worked!

but, we couldn't put her down after she fell asleep.

So I wore her in a Boba.

and surrounded her with noise and wore her in my Happy Wrap.

(photo credit to Donna Musel)

she got great long laps in the happy wrap and could be surrounded with banging pots and women talking and a whole camp of girls!

I took her outside where she fell asleep in the warm sun and loved it.

but I still couldn't put her down.

and here we are when I did put her down! and she lasted like an hour! but that didn't happen again.

So here we are:

We've been trying to sleep train her and she's doing pretty good.

We can put her down for naps in her Rock and Play which we drag to her room in the day time for naps then drag it back into our room for bedtime at night.

However, another challenge arose when she reaches the end of her first REM cycle.

Babies have a REM cycle of 45-50 minutes...and Lux as difficulty transitioning to the next REM cycle, so she promptly wakes up at exactly 45 minutes after falling asleep.

it's called the 45 minutes Intruder.

So, since finding that out, I've tried to figure out ways to overcome the 45 minutes intruder.

I've just been embracing it.

Can't force her to sleep, but sometimes I can go in there, calm her down, run my fingers through her hair, and get her back to sleep.

If I can't, then I just bring her out of her room, and enjoy her til I see her eyelids dropping again.

It's been a process, but it gets better every day.Each day i feel like i know her better.and I gain more and more confidence each day as her mom.and I love it.and even though we battle these short naps or her inability to sleep sometimes;we have pretty good nights with her:)I still get up two times to feed her and change her diaper;but even in the dim light of the nightlight i see her bright eyes looking up at me, her grin, and her trusting little face.Makes it all very very worth it.